Sands of Time
by Monisse
Summary: Everything that remained was her, alone, seating in the front steps, a blue garbage bag in her hands with the few belongings she allowed herself to keep. There was nothing else for her in the house that she had once called home. Temperance's life story.
1. Chapter 1

This story came as a challenge at the BoneYard by Brainysmrf (If I'm not mistaken) and it consisted in writing a story about the origins of one of Bones' characters. It had to have 3 chapters:  
_1st chapter - From birth to 12 years old.  
2 nd chapter - 12 to 18 years old.  
3 rd chapter - 18 to 25 years old.  
_It had to be a story with their life previous to the series, about their family, costumes, friends, hobbies, etc.

To say that I failed this challenge is an understatement, by the third chapter my muse ran away leaving me with an unfinished story, and yet one that made me really proud.  
So, I chose Brennan's character, it's the easiest one to write, for me.

I hope you enjoy, since this one is the last story I have writen so far, now I'm caught up in something more academic than writing fanfic. And also, leave reviews, they are always an inspiration to me.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the characters. Situations and places that have not been shown in the Tv show might be similar with my own childhood, a writer has to be inspired by something she know's right?

* * *

_Joy_.

It was what the mother felt looking down at her daughter, still flushed pink like a newborn.

"Blue eyes." She had said with a tear stained face "My baby has blue eyes."

The woman cradled the little girl closer to her chest, her hand reached out to smooth the only curl of silky auburn hair. The eyes of her mother swam with tears and pride.

_"_My girl, my Joy._"_ A lovely whisper in the babies' small ear.

She smiled down at the baby who yawned and stretched her small fingers before falling again into a peaceful slumber.

* * *

Her small eyelids opened slowly, the crystal rays in her blue eyes sparkled in million colors with the morning's moisture and the first waves of a new day that erupted from the small window near the white wood crib.  
There was a slow movement above that caught her eye. In a slow dance, so full of bright colors and spring wind, there were small dolphins of all the colors of the rainbow, hanging from strings and a mobile, just above her vision.

Her eyes danced around in the flow of movement, perplexed by the simply beauty she didn't understand but made her lips curl into a bright smile and her hands stretched to touch those magnificent creatures swimming in the air.

"Good morning, my princess." A warm voice spoke, far from her vision.

Blue eyes searched all around the soft pink walls adorned with butterflies and daisies for the comforting voice she knew well, until they fell on another pair of eyes, the same color of hers, smiling down at her.  
The man stood above the crib and stretched his large hands to his daughter and lifted her carefully from the soft covers and finally enveloped her small body in his strong arms.

She felt secure, a warm sense of protection and love warming her beating heart.  
Her small hand clasped its tiny fingers around one of her father's with the force of an unspoken plea.

'_Never leave me._'

* * *

By the afternoon summer heat, there was laughter, hurried running after a bouncing ball and the firm voice of her father and her brother's screams of excitement. Inside, the silence reigned in the walls of a small living room. Her world swing back and forth, back and forth in the arms of her mother.  
Rays of sun cascaded in her face and her barely open eyes.

Back and forth, in the rocking chair by the window, her mother smiled, brightly, to the outside and returned her eyes to the sighing baby in her arms. There was a soft song in the air and a warm echo in her mother's chest, so close to her ear, where she lay curled to the warmth of her protector.  
Her mother's voice floated in the room, melodic words enveloped her mind and formed dreams of peace behind her small blue eyes slowly closing into sleep.

Only back and forth remained in her senses and the strong feeling of safety.

* * *

There were always embraces, warm arms that stretched towards her, that showed her the world outside the safe sanctuary of her room.

Her innocent mind recognized all of them like her family, in the back of her mind the instincts of survival made her clung to that small nucleus, trusting with all her heart the hands that held hers and urged her first steps. Steps that were tentative, with small trembling legs, but nonetheless she felt her father's hands urging her forward as the smiles and cheers of her mother and brother got brighter and louder.

She tried her hardest, moving her legs forward as fast as she could and then she fell to her hands, but that didn't matter, because they were all staring at her with pride in her eyes and that made her smile with unknown victory.

"That's my girl!" Her father said with tears in his clear blue eyes.

* * *

At night, her parents always came to place soft kisses in her cheeks, said their goodbyes and turned the lights off, leaving the room to the silence and darkness of the night. It was not after a while that she would see the door open again, and by instinct, she would hug her favorite doll closer to her heart, that beat with fear, her eyes open wide.

Then she would see the brown familiar eyes, belonging to someone who slowly sneaked into her bedroom to come sit by her bed with a warm smile.

"Kyle!" She squealed happily, now relieved to know that the stranger that entered in her room was in fact her older brother. Her senses calmed down and it was now safe to come out of the pile of covers around her head.

"Shhh…" He hushed his three year old sister with a small finger in her lips and she nodded in understanding.

"Tell me a story." She pleaded in a whisper, eyes bright with excitement, expecting another one of the fantastic tales of far away adventures that the boy knew so well and loved to tell his little sister.

Every night they repeated the ritual, after everyone was already asleep and the moon was already high in the sky, he would tell a story and she would hear attentively, every word that came from his lips vibrated with terrible monsters and damsels in the highest towers of a castle, until her eyelids close and her brother tighten the covers around her and whispered a soft goodnight in her ear.

* * *

There were nights when the monsters of her brother's stories would become real, in her head, in her nightmares. Scared, with tears in the corners of her eyes and her doll under one arm, she would slip from the security of the covers in the darkness and silence of her room, with bare feet she would cross the cold wood tiles, walking to her parent's room in search of warm comfort.

"Mommy, Daddy?" She would whisper to the darkness.

More times than often, she would open the door to a vast emptiness, no signal of her parents. With resignation and a small hand to clean the flow of tears in her blue orbs she would walk all the way back and knock on the door of her brother's room, for she was sure that there she would find a warm bed and company to chase away the monsters until the sunrise.

* * *

The safe peace that she felt was being slowly washed away by the hushed conversations of her parents that she could hear from the spot on the living room floor where she played with a small jigsaw.  
And then, she was no longer her mother's joy, and she could hear her father's strong voice yelling at her brother for no apparent reason. He had his hands in the boy's shoulders and both kept yelling a name, '_Russ_'.

Her eyes started to tear at the loud sounds and ached for her brother's torment, and immediately her mother held her tight and soothed her worries into whimpers.

"It's alright Temperance. Everything is going to be fine."

What had happened she didn't understand, in her child mind the new name didn't mean anything, and it took a while to answerer to it, until she couldn't remember any longer who she was before.

* * *

Everything changed abruptly. Her parents tossed a few bags in the trunk of the car and her brother held her hand, as they left the house in hurried steps. From the car's window she looked back, waving an innocent goodbye to the home she loved so much.

The new town was crowded, there were shops and many people coming and going in the streets. In the new house she had a big room all painted with soft colors and a bed filled with stuffed animals and pillows by the window. A study table and bookcases with books of all shapes and forms. She would love it there, she was sure of it.

From her window she could see a green backyard with a swing and multicolored flowers all around. The children's laughter that played outside in the street by the warm sun of a spring afternoon filled the air with a new sense of peace in her life.

* * *

Spring days always held the promise of a warm summer, and whenever the weather allowed, she and her mother would sit in the back steps of their modest house in Chicago. From there both could see the men of the family tossing a ball around in the backward.

With her twelve years old she was already fixed in the small letters of a complex book in her hands, her eyes danced around the lines of words and her mind assimilated everything, thirsting for knowledge.

"Marco!" Her brother shouted from the distance.

She only smiled and did her best to ignore the interruption, she pushed the book up in her hands and blocked the vision to the green expanse ahead.

"Marco." She heard the name again without answering.

By this time both their parents looked at them with amusement in their eyes.

"Marco!" Another shout.

And then she tossed the book aside, ran along the grass with a smile in her lips, stole the ball from her brother's feet and kicked it into the improved goal.

"Polo!" She shouted and turned around as bright as she ever looked, with her curls to the soft wind.

Her brother laughed, picked her up and spun her around, affectionately.  
She saw, from the distance, both their parents sat nearby and watched them with smiles and love in their eyes, as the last rays of spring settled behind the houses, illuminating the smiling faces of the small family.

* * *

The next chapter will come soon. I'm hoping for your reviews!


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you so much for the reviews!

* * *

She ran, ran as fast as her legs would allow among the snow, far from the laughter and the humiliation. The ponytail of her auburn curls fell from its grasp and the strands of hair were now falling on her face, blinding her vision, but she kept running even though the bag of books in her back weighted too much.  
Her feet made the known path up the stair to the house,she openedand closed the door with a loud sound, alerting everyone in the house for her presence.

In a hurried mess she climbed the stairs and entered her room, closed the door in the face of her brother who had ran after her with worry. Discarding her bag to the side, she let the weight of her body fall into the bed in a mess of pillows and tears.

"Tempe, are you alright?" His worried voice came from the other side of the door.

"Go away, Russ. I don't want to talk." Her voice came muffled from the place sherested her head in between her arms.

Her lungs expanded trying to reach for some air as her eyes fought against the tears thatburned in her eyes and stubbornly fell down her cheeks.

"Honey, can I come in?" The soft voice of her mother caressed her ears.

After a long pause without answering back she heard the door of her room opening and paces in her direction, and from the corner of her eyes she saw her mother seat in the bed beside her.

"What's wrong?"

She didn't say a word, just lifted her body and simply rested her head in her mother's lap. A warm hand caressed her head in a calm pace, waiting patiently. Itwas the first time that the woman had seen such hurt clouding the blue eyes of her daughter and it pained her heart.

"It was Andy Fluger, he was my secret Santa. He gave me a Brainy Smurf. I wanted Smurfette, but he gave me Brainy and laughed at me, and everyone else did the same."

"Oh honey, I'm so sorry_._"

"I liked him, I really did. And it hurts so much now." Her voice was only a whisper.

"I know, but a boy who hurts you is not worth ofyour love. Your heart is too precious to shed tears over someone who doesn't deserve_._"

She nodded silently at the wise words of her mother and learneda valuable lesson, only pain came out from giving her heart away to someone who's not worth of it.

* * *

School days were not boring, quite the contrary. Every new day was a discovery, learning was the food of her mind and it craved for more every time.  
She loved school time and since very young she demonstrated to be a very bright student, and yet, since then she learned that the intelligent ones were outcasts. Looks of disproval and dismal were thrown in her direction every time her hand rose to answer a question, because to her, everything seemed so easy, so simple.

She would seat at the back of the class, her intelligence disguised, and she would listen, only listen and absorb every fragment of knowledge she yearned for. Because of that, her lips would remain closed for hours in a row as her brother passed by the window to check out his little sister, and always, she felt proud of it.

At recess she would be found in the library, her hand brushed by the many hard covers of books and addedone or another to the already tall pile in her arms.  
In the warmer days, she would sit outside near a tall tree, refreshing at its shadow, surrounded by her only two best friends.

They were simple girls, who enjoyed her company not by her popularity, because that was nonexistent, but because they understood her, even with her strange ways of talking, with big words and sometimes not knowing what was happening in the latest TV show, and that didn't matter to them, because they were friends, and she cherished them immensely.

"Let's go, Tempe." A small blond girl pushed her friend by the hand, urging her to get up. – "I feel like singing today, it's the last day of school!"

As much as she was enjoying her book, she was still a girl, who wanted to sing and dance, spin around herself untilshe fellto the ground laughing with her friends. So, she stood up and followed her friends home.

The girls stood in the coffee table, in their summer shorts and colorful socks. Hairbrushes and spoons were their microphones, and the girls danced and jumped in their musical enthusiasm as the lyrics of the song played loud in the LP player.

"_I come home, in the morning light; my mother says when I'm going to live my life right…_"

Their voices erupted in the air, louder than the record itself, filling the house with an exciting melody.  
The girls slumped in the sofa all together in the end, breathing hard and laughing hysterically at their performance, there were hopes in their eyes for a bright summer to come, because after all, girls just want to have fun.

* * *

She lay in her bed, surrounded by many papers and books, colorful pens, but her head was not in them. Her mind had flew elsewhere, remembering the happy days of heat, picnics in the park, afternoons in the pool and bicycle rides around the block racing with her brother.  
That summer had been the happiest of her life and she was now fifth teen years old. So many things had happened, so strong, so fast that madeher head spin in a turmoil of emotions, senses and logics that were foreign to her own reason.

For the first time she felt what was like to kiss. She met a boy, slightly older than her, who had moved to the neighborhood. Her eyes spotted him in the other side of the road one day when shesat by the window, but at the time she didn't acknowledged his presence, he was simply another boy who was an expert in tossing a basket ball around.

Until the day she came from school, with an impossible pile of books in her hands blocking her vision ahead. And suddenly everything was on the floor with a loud sound. She was infuriated, who would dare to bump into her, ruining the precious books?

"I'm so sorry_._" He said and kneeledbeside her to help.

And when she looked up, her blue eyes locked with the softest of browns she had even seen. A bright smile caressed the delicate features of the brown haired boy. Immediately she felt all the annoyance slipping away under his stare, and soon she was holding the books once again tightly against her chest and ran in the direction of her house and only stoppedwhen she reached her bedroom with an accelerated heart that had nothing to do with the running.

The tingling sensation of their summer kisses still remained in her lips, even now.

* * *

It had been another season of hopes, first kisses and laugher, but winter came upon her too soon. It was slowly snowing outside; the white expanse of soft icy water reflected the intense bright lights of Christmas decorations that adorned the familiar homes around.  
Soon, it would come, her favorite season of the year, where their little family would seat around the tree, warmed by the burning fire, lights down and the rainbow colors of lights illuminating their carols and winter stories. They would open the presents and share the warm feelings within their hearts, holding the promises for a brilliant new year ahead.

She sighed in her bed once more, the exciting feeling of the season ran in her veins and although that made her impatient there was another mixture of feelings she didn't quite understand, that settled in her heart and made her nervous.

A knock on the door washed aside those emotions, and brought her back to the solace of her room.

_"_Can we come in?" The strong but warm voice of her father asked between the partially open door.

"Of course." She answeredand satstraight in the bed.

Her parents entered further into the room and came sit at each side of her in the bed, looking at her with pride and love in their eyes, like so many times before.

"Honey, we love you so much_._" Her mother said, extending a hand to caress her face.

"I know, Mom." She smiled dearly at both her parents.

"Know that we've always been proud of you_._" Her father whispered in secret.

She only nodded; the power of her father's words resounded in the walls around her room and rested in her heart.

"Remember that, no matter what, we'll always be with you_._" Her mother whispered in her ear and placeda tender kiss in her cheek.

There was something definitive in their words that she couldn't understand, but her mind registered every word as if they were the last ones.

"I love you." She said to her parents before curling under the covers.

A great sadness surrounded her being unexpectedly, and even though there was no reason to feel that way, she couldn't put it aside, as her parents walked out of the room closing the door behind them. In that night, sleep didn't come until it was early in the morning, nightmares that were not of monsters anymore assaulted her restless state.

"Christmas will come soon_._" She murmured to herself, and with that thought the first sun rays lulled her mind to sleep.

* * *

The morning brought hushed voices to her room, the sounds of paces and car doors. Her blue eyes opened in alarm, an accelerated heartbeat in her chest.She threwthe covers aside andran downstairs in her soft blue pajamas, passing by the emptiness of her parents' bedroom. She reached the freezing cold air of the winter morning, bare feet crossing the snow, but she didn't care, what was happening before her froze the blood in their veins.

Her parents were inside the car, driving away from the house, from them. In the distance she only saw her mother looking back once, waving goodbye.  
A warm hand held her shoulder, and from her peripheral vision she saw the face of her brother, fighting hard against the tears in his eyes. It didn't made sense in her mind, but he did understand, and encircled his little sister in the safety of his arms.

A shadow of hurt and confusion wrapped around her heart and assaulted her fragile mind, sinking it into a sort of despair she never experienced before.

The days went by without them coming back. The house echoed in silence and she spent the days and nights confined to her room, not answering the calls of her worried friends, not allowing her brother to come in.

And then it was Christmas Eve, and the sounds of steps downstairs woke her into conscience. Her heart skipped a bit and in haste she ran downstairs with hope in her steps.

"Mom, Dad? Are you home?"

When she reached the living room the disappointment was written all over her blue eyes. Her brother was slowly placing the small pieces of angels and bells in the green branches of their Christmas tree. The presents were displayed beneath it in colorful papers, waiting for a family to open them. But there was no sight of her parents.

"Merry Christmas." Her brother said with a sad smile in his features, hoping that a little of the spirit would make his sister happy again.

"What are you doing?" She snapped at him in a low cold voice.

"I thought we could do our own Christmas…" He offered in his defense.

"You thought?" Sheyelled at him, fists closed and anger burning in her eyes. – "I don't want a Christmas! I want Mom and Dad back!"

And she ran up the stairs again with fury in her mind, her heart broken in pieces at the frightening realization that her parents would not come home anymore.

* * *

As the time went by, all the emotions, love and tender care her parents provided to her, suddenly seemed just like figments of her imagination.

The next thing she knew was that feeling again, which she could now categorize as abandonment. Her brother left too; the boy who she grew up to love and admire was no better than her parents and entered the car and drove away, just like themin that morning.

Now everything that remained was her, alone, seating in the front steps, a blue garbage bag in her hands with the few belongings she allowed herself to keep, a favorite doll, a book, pictures to remind her of the past and two small boxes wrapped in multicolored paper. Dreams and hopes for the future left behind.

There was nothing else for her in the house that she had once called home.

_The End_


End file.
